Earlier this week, we posted the AYP (adequate yearly progress) reports, better known as No Child Left Behind. Every school in Roanoke County and Salem passed except for Andrew Lewis Middle School. Click here to head back to our earlier post.

Here’s a press release from the city of Salem regarding the subject:

All of Salem’s City Schools are and will remain fully accredited under Virginia Department of Education standards. Under “No Child Left Behind,” the targets increase each year as the federal law continues its march toward requiring 100% pass rates by 2014 for all children in all tested grade levels in all schools nationwide.

The Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) numbers are just one variable in a much larger equation when it comes to educating young people. Last year when Salem was one of only 16 school divisions in the entire state to meet all of the federal indicators in all schools and as a division, the city treated the news without any fanfare, and this year as we just miss making the list we see no reason to overreact.

Salem High School, East Salem Elementary, G.W. Carver Elementary, South Salem Elementary, and West Salem Elementary met AYP on all 29 indicators. Andrew Lewis Middle School missed one mathematics indicator, by three percentage points ‐ the equivalent of two children. In addition, AYP status at Andrew Lewis Middle School may change pending an appeal to the Virginia Department of Education concerning eight middle school students’ math scores

People are fascinated by statistics, but in Salem Schools we remember that students are not numbers, they are individuals. Currently, many of those individuals across the Commonwealth and across the nation are struggling when it comes to middle school math scores.

“Students learn at different rates, and the range of developmental readiness for mathematics is considerable during the early middle school years,” says Salem Superintendent Dr. Alan Seibert. “Individual students continue to learn and grow throughout middle school and our 8th grade students consistently achieve at high levels.”

Salem administrators and math teachers from every school in the system have been working to identify the best practices for helping students acquire the skills needed to succeed in a 21st Century Global Economy, not merely to make a minimum score on a specific test at a particular grade‐level. Seibert says he is confident that excellent progress is being made in this area.

“Test scores are important because they are indicators of student progress, but we teach children, not percentages,”says Seibert. “More importantly, we teach children for 180 days a year and not just the day of an assessment.”

You can look up details on each Salem school (or anywhere in Western Virginia, for that matter) on our Datasphere.